Media Man

Being depressed isn't fun, right? It makes you feel useless, puts you in a poor temper and generally skews your view on things to the nihilistic side for the rest of the day. I say this to disclaim that I'm not saying that you should go out and buy art to purposefully depress yourself. I'm just asking, if something we know is depressing is before us, does that necessarily mean we should avoid it at any cost, especially if it's a representation of real life events? The biggest question here is: What's the point of depressing art? Artists certainly use it to vent, that's true, but what does it mean for us, the readers? One point of depressing art could be empathy. Take, for example, the book Maus , which tells the true story of a holocaust survivor and his struggles with the author, his son. People can identify with this story for many reasons: struggling with a relative with alzheimer's, a distant parent, even having a friend or relative who's

Deadpool  is a 2016 superhero action/comedy directed by Tim Miller and written by duo Paul Wernick/Rhett Reese. The film was, and still is, huge among audiences and critics, surpassing Passion of the Christ  as the highest grossing R-rated film ever made. Story The plot, for the most part, is a simple revenge story. Somebody kidnaps Deadpool's girlfriend and now Deadpool has to find and kill the bad guy and save the hot chick. What makes it work, though, is that the movie knows it's simple, so that's not what the focus is on. The focus is on the character of Deadpool himself and the screenplay. Deadpool is a full ant-hero through and through: he only cares about getting his revenge, not helping people or fighting bad guys for any other reason. You're able to route for him, though, because they spent time setting up Deadpool's back story and why we're supposed to care about him. This is helped by the fact that the character is consistently funny. The other c

Today we're revising Arrow  season 3. I can't explain what was wrong with this season. After the brilliant climax of season 2, the show became insufferable. The character dynamics became annoying and melodramatic, the pacing was sinfully boring and it felt like nothing from the last season had any consequence. It ticked me off!! So, to sooth my own soul and to hopefully present you with something you'll enjoy, we're going to get my version of Arrow  season 3. Let's fix this. The biggest issue I had with season 3 was the amount of time passed since season 2. It is way too long of a time and I felt robbed of a potential storyline between seasons. What happened in Starling City after that? Was there resistance? What did the team do to clean up the city? The other gripe for me there was that I felt like it was stupid not to have either Oliver or Roy go after Thea. She's Oliver's beloved sister and she's Roy's girlfriend. They were told not to

The Seventh Seal  is a 1958 supernatural medieval drama written and directed by famed Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and is the first of his films I've seen. For this review I'm going to alter the format I used for my review of The Birds : I'll be discussing story elements first and then discuss the technical parts of the film. Story A knight struggling with his faith and his nihilistic squire are coming home to their native Sweden after a 10 year long crusade. On his way to his castle, he meets a family of performers, a naive blacksmith and a young woman from an abandoned village. Along the way, the knight plays a game of chess with Death, the Grim Reaper, himself in exchange for his life. The game continues throughout the entire film at certain points. One of the main themes of the film is nihilism. While the knight isn't sure if he believes in God his entire trip, his squire is adamant that there is no God and that life itself has no meaning at all, at one p

So according to my blog's view counter, nobody wants to hear about The Seventh Seal , one of the greatest movies of all time. Fine then! I'll talk about what you wanna hear: Star Wars. I just watched Star Wars: The Force Awakens  for the fourth time and, upon this viewing, I did accept in my heart of hearts that the film isn't perfect. There are some flimsy character motivations and recycled plot points, but I'll get into that in a later review, if you want. However, not only is the film good, it has the potential to be spectacular. I believe that Episode 8 will make full use of this potential and more. Here's why: Enter Rian Johnson, the writer and director of Star Wars Episode 8 . Since a majority of you probably don't know who this man is, I will inform you. In 2012, Johnson released his first feature film Looper , a sci-fi action drama that will get its own review soon enough. What I will say, however, is that the film was fantastic, one of the m